Encyclopedia of Latin American Religions

DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-08956-0_16-1
# Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2015

Cultural Industry
Vanina Papalini*
Center for Investigation and Study of Culture and Society, National Council for Scientic and Technical Research, Crdoba,
Crdoba, Argentina

Keywords
Cultural industries; Mass media; Electronic churches; Exhibition of intimacy; Therapeutic culture;
Spiritualization

Definition
The expansion of Christian religions such as the Pentecostal, Adventist, and Baptist churches in Latin
America has proted not only mass media but also a vertically integrated network of cultural industries, to
facilitate the propagation of faith. Belief and adhesion become partially independent from presence. This
modality of communicating religion through mass media has enabled the introduction of the universe of
New Age beliefs. The New Age cultivates its relationship with cultural industries; given that it lacks
structural, institutional devices for its propagation, the extension of its beliefs is carried out through a
generic dissemination movement that the media amplies.

Introduction
Religions have used, since ancient times, different technical methods to disseminate themselves. In the
Western world, the printing press could be considered one of the oldest. These media have served to
propagate faith, as an extension of missionary work, and to consolidate adhesion to religious beliefs. With
the emergence of mass media, this divulgation takes on an impersonal appearance. Although the relation
with an anonymous parish does not replace the liturgy and the rituals that make up a religious community,
mass media allow the message to have a broader reception, compete with programs with commercial
content, and reach those who do not participate in rites in person.
The relation between the media and religions is well known in Latin America. The expansion of some
Christian churches such as the Pentecostal, Adventist, and Baptist churches had interaction with the media
as one of its keys, through radio and TV programs, as well as its own music production and publishing.
This strategy has been key to their expansion, so much so that they have been given the name electronic
churches. Not only mass media but also a complete and vertically integrated network of cultural
industries, which range from audiovisual production to retail stores, facilitate the propagation of faith.
Belief and adhesion become partially independent of presence, to the extreme of proposing healings from
television or radio programs to their audiences, ignoring the electronic medium.
This antecedent of taking advantage of a communication device, which mediates between collective
and individual religious experiences, cultivates religious intimacy, allows for uncoupling faith from
territorial confessional practices, and tends to create globalized networks of believers. At the same
time, religious identity results from a personal construction liberated from institutional regulations and
*Email: vaninapapalini@gmail.com
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Encyclopedia of Latin American Religions

DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-08956-0_16-1
# Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2015

disperses spatially, which does not imply participating in communities (Reyna Ruiz 2012, pp. 5457). As
Reyna Ruiz says, The religious universe constructed by the media allows for the displacement of the
sacred space toward the intimacy of individuals and gives rise to a very personal elaboration of ones
world of meaning (2012, p. 56). The conformation of religious communities in the form of networks or
groups linked by a communication device adapts itself to the form that the medium demands: they are
constituted as audiences.
Worship of the direct relation with divinity, the unnecessariness of the institution, and eclectic,
personalized, and delocalized credos are elements that are better expressed in the New Age than in any
other religion (Torre and Gutirrez Ziga 2013). The modality of communicating religion through mass
media has facilitated the introduction of the universe of New Age beliefs. Almost naturally, the landscape
of social representations is transforming: the culture of the 1990s reveals processes of respiritualization,
growth in the importance of emotions, and interest in well-being understood holistically. Toward the end
of the twenty-rst century, the social discourses in circulation show the double path experienced by the
cultural paradigm: on the one hand a turn toward subjectivity (Arfuch 2002), on the other hand the
re-enchanting of narratives.
The return of the self, which in media formats manifests itself as a proliferation of rst-person stories
and a prominent presence of narratives from everyday life, amalgamates with a new cultural period
dedicated to the subjective dimension with special interest in personal expression and everyday life. In
cultural industries, new products, genres, and formats appear, such as talk shows and reality shows; the
sale of self-help books increases, and segments and columns with specialists aimed at explaining
emotions and making interpersonal relationships understandable are introduced.
On the other hand, a cultural process of re-enchantment of the world becomes visible: a narrative of
transcendence in spiritualist language is consolidated, the production of fantastic tales is renewed, and these
gain importance in public preference. Both processes, which assume the existence of an invisible,
immaterial dimension with interference in the outcome of events, manifest themselves in the production
of cultural industries, both ction and nonction. So, for example, programs with interviews with relevant
personalities report conversions, while hosts, announcers, and journalists recreate themselves as spiritual
advisers and guides. The back-and-forth and interaction between the eld of religion and communication
devices become more frequent, at the same time as the use of notions such as harmony, well-being, and
energy is naturalized. Psychological and metaphysical justications nourish arguments in debates.
The discursive transformations observed indicate a change in sensibilities, in collective worries, and in
ways of understanding the world, which are reected in the makeup of common sense. The renovation of
formats, themes, and beliefs in cultural production is echoed in sociocultural transformations in the
making: the action of cultural industries both externalizes and feeds back into these changes. Cultural
goods possess a symbolic efcacy that inuences the lifestyles, beliefs, and social representations of a
culture or community. But at the same time, they are merchandise that circulates according to market laws.
Knowing the taste and needs of the public and responding to their expectations so that production is
disseminated and commercialized assumes that cultural industries act like radars alert to the inclinations
of their consumers.

Authenticity and the Exhibition of Intimacy

In the 1990s, a new paradigm shift is observed in the social discourses in circulation that reinforces the
enthronement of the individual. The proliferation of rst-person stories and the prominent presence of
narratives of everyday life, the insistent use of the testimonial resource, and the elevation to public space
of the biographies of personalities with no outstanding attributes express a social sensibility inclined to
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Encyclopedia of Latin American Religions

DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-08956-0_16-1
# Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2015

instances of rapid identication and emotional mobilization. There is a common root shared by biographical and intimate media genres and the culture inspired by the New Age: both cases are about the
expression of the self in its authenticity, showing its emotions and revaluing everyday narratives. It is
the language of experience.
In signicant materials and, more than anything, in the language of the media, a personal stamp is the
necessary counterweight to the serialized grammars of production. The appearance of common people,
instead of personalities trained in the world of the spectacle, brings back human esh and blood to the
standardized genres and formats of mass media. Personal accounts, interviews, confessions, calls from the
audience, or instant messages transmitted publicly online fulll the classic slogan of giving roots to
events, making the story more concrete, and bringing the protagonist closer. Thanks to this means of
personication, the receiver feels individually reected in the others experience. The situations described
tend to produce compassion, empathy, and strong effects of truth. Personal spiritual experience enters into
this narrative style and in this way is able to distance itself from the spectacularization effect typical of
large religious events.
The modality of media representation collaborates in the creation of afnities and adhesions. The
realistic image typical of the media creates effects of truth (Vern 1998), is moving, and triggers
identication processes with a strong emotional investment. Subjectivity is introduced to the public stage
by the display of personal and domestic problems on talk shows, as well as by the transparency of life
itself in reality shows and the display of intimacy in conversational formats. Even cinema and the arts
speak of a turn toward the interior, a meticulous scrutinization of subjectivity, biography, and personal
affective history. In this discursive context, the preachings of a singular and made-to-measure religiosity converge spontaneously with the sensibility promoted by cultural industries.

Emotional and Spiritual Therapies on the Media Stage

The practices and explanations aimed at achieving psychophysical well-being and better quality of life are
on the cultural industries agenda. Traditional columns of specialists and experts on the radio, in
magazines, in newspapers, and on television incorporate subjective issues: emotions and interpersonal
relationships, well-being, psychological ills, health understood holistically, couples, and communication,
among other issues. The presence of psychologists becomes frequent in mass media. For its part, the
publishing industry registers successful sales of self-help books, with exponential growth in the publication of new titles and new editions of older titles.
This ostensible incorporation of psychological and therapeutic themes in cultural space reinforces the
presence of what is called therapeutic culture (Illouz 2008) or psy culture (Rose 1989). In terms of the
system of mass media, this phenomenon refers to the extension and vulgarization of knowledge,
techniques, and resources of subjective support that are immediately available in society and that are
accessed without the intervention of experts. Therapeutic culture is based on popularized notions from
distinct types of psychology and neuroscience, as well as from a wide variety of alternative and
complementary therapies, traditional medicine, and New Age beliefs and thought that are aimed at taking
care of oneself (Papalini 2013). Even scientic information used in publicity strategies forms part of this
tendency.
Cultural industries, the media, and the network of circulation of information on the web strengthen the
extension of therapeutic culture: in any magazine or newspaper insert there appear tests that allow for a
simple self-diagnosis and an outline of personality proles; numerous articles or periodical programs deal
with social phobias and panic attacks; on radio and television testimonies and examples of people who
have recovered from obesity proliferate; interviews by a mobile team of journalists at the scene of an
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Encyclopedia of Latin American Religions

DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-08956-0_16-1
# Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2015

accident express their feelings, more than their opinions, regarding the event, and the possibility of trauma
is analyzed by an expert on the ground.
The Chilean Maria del Pilar Sordo Martinez, the Argentine Jorge Bucay, the Puerto Rican Alessandra
Rampolla, the Mexican Estela Duran Mena, and the Venezuelans Vladimir and Maria Mercedes Gessen
are some of the well-known specialists, commentators, and hosts that move in the spaces of cultural
industry and Latin American web videos. The majority of these experts are inclined to a holistic
consideration of the subject but without adhering to a dened religion or credo.
There are also presences directly linked to religion, indebted to the style of the electronic churches of
the 1970s and 1980s. The program Escola de Amor (School of Love) of the Universal Church,
transmitted on R7 TV, Brazil, or the columns of Armando Alducin Fletcher, of Mexico, are examples
of this relationship between churches and the media. In the majority of these cases, the task of
dissemination is complemented by personal interaction and the distribution of pamphlets, as well as
web pages with links to the varied religious cultural production.
The New Age reaches the media using a different rhetoric, aimed less at the dissemination of precepts.
Its exposition is more surreptitious; it lters into the stories of personalities of the cultural industry. Given
that its accent is on personal experience, the testimonial story is the most appropriate mode of transmission and well-known personalities the best representatives. Acting as guests in traditional media spaces,
they tell of their conversions, their life changes, linked to growing spirituality. Two simultaneous
movements are observed: media personalities who turn to spiritual deepening, converting themselves
into guides and advisers, or the opposite, spiritual leaders who have moved from the religious world to
media spaces. The New Age cultivates its relationship with cultural industries; given that it lacks
structural, institutional devices for its propagation, the extension of its beliefs is carried out through a
generic dissemination movement that the media amplies.
The connections of the New Age with artists can be even more direct: in continuity with its counterculture origins, it has a strong reception in the world of art, where esotericism also abounds. The
Venezuelan Conny Mendez (Juana Maria de la Concepcion Mendez Guzman) or the Argentine Ludovica
Squirru Dari combine art and spirituality, although in both cases their involvement in religiosity and the
lifestyle they lead distance them from the stage.

Integrated Symbolic Merchandise

In their function as global merchandise, symbolic goods produced by cultural industries have adopted the
rules of the traditional serial production modality, or variants that allow for greater diversication of the
product, attending to the needs of different market segments. The way in which each cultural product
takes advantage of the creative nucleus arguments and characters, fundamentally is varied and intense.
Once its success is veried, it is utilized in numerous support materials: calendars, videos, movies, books,
merchandise, web pages, e-books, video games, and audio books are produced. Following the same logic,
the niches that products are aimed at diversify equally: adolescents, families, executives, etc. In the case of
Latin American countries, the interweaving of cultural industries and consumer logics is less developed
and of smaller scale, especially with reference to the production of goods. In contrast, there is a back-andforth between the religious and the therapeutic media space and the editorial market: the same person
hosts a television program, writes books, directs a magazine, and gives seminars, conferences, or
workshops for a public that is generally conned within national borders. Their possibility for expansion,
depending on nationality, can reach the Latin American community residing in the United States or Spain.
Although there are exceptional cases, like Paulo Coelho, very rarely do these personalities become
transnational successes.
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Encyclopedia of Latin American Religions

DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-08956-0_16-1
# Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2015

Latin American Novels

The production of spiritually oriented literature by Latin American authors is elevated and occupies a
notable spot in the rankings of best sellers in each country. In addition to typical self-help books, there are
others that t in a similar narrative space, texts that, in the form of allegorical novels, evoke values that
collaborate in facing problems. These books are read in search of guidance and inspiration.
Paulo Coelho ts in this segment, especially the best seller The Alchemist (Coelho 1988/1990). A little
bit closer to science ction and in a style reminiscent of The Little Prince, by Antoine de Saint-Exupery,
the series Ami, Child of the Stars (1986), by the Chilean Enrique Barrios, provides direction in New Age
inspired values to a child and teen audience. He has also written books for adults, such as El Libro de Dios
Amor (The Book of the God of Love), initially titled Mensaje Acuariano (The Aquarian Message) (1991).
This kind of hybrid literature shows the generalization of New Age notions, which expand and circulate
widely in the discourses of Latin American cultural industries.

Cross-References
Complementary and Alternative Medicines
Counterculture
Energy
Individualization
New Age
New Age Books
New Age Consumption
New Age Imagery
Psychology and New Age
Self Help Industry
Spirituality

References
Arfuch L (2002) El espacio biogrco. Fondo de Cultura Econmica, Buenos Aires
Barrios E (1986) Ami, el nio de las estrellas. Ediciones Acuarianas, Santiago
Barrios E (1991) Mensaje Acuariano. Errepar, Buenos Aires
Coelho P (1988/1990) O alquimista. Editora Rocco, Rio de Janeiro
De la Torre R, Gutirrez Ziga C (2013) Introduccin. In: De la Torre R, Gutirrez Ziga C, Jurez Huet
N (coord.) Variaciones y apropiaciones latinoamericanas del New Age, 1st edn. Publicaciones de la
Casa Chata, Mxico, pp 1321
Illouz E (2008) Saving the modern soul. University of California Press, Berkeley/Los Angeles
Papalini V (2013) Recetas para sobrevivir a las exigencias del capitalismo (o de cmo la autoayuda se
volvi parte de nuestro sentido comn). Nueva Sociedad 245:163177
Reyna Ruiz AM (2012) Las frecuencias de Dios: programas con contenido religioso en la radio del Valle
de Mxico. Universidad Autnoma Metropolitana Unidad Xochimilco, Mxico
Rose N (1989) Governing the soul. Free Association Books, London
Vern E (1998) La semiosis social. Gedisa, Barcelona

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